Nick Faldo is not mincing words when it comes to LIV Golf.
The six-time major winner blasted the Saudi-backed golf tour on Wednesday, predicting it would fail after the PGA-LIV tour merger because no one would buy into its team-based format.
“Nobody’s really interested,” Faldo said ahead of hosting the British Masters at The Belfry in England. “They’re not going to get the sponsorship that they want. They call it a team [event] and it’s not because it’s stroke play. You see your mates on the putting green and say, ‘Play well,’ and you see them in the scorer’s tent and say, ‘What did you shoot?’ That’s it. A team is out there helping, shoulder to shoulder. That’s a true team.
“You have the ultimate team event, the Ryder Cup, you know the passion and the atmosphere of that. They’re not playing with the same passion and atmosphere as the Ryder Cup.”
LIV Golf’s format has a number of new twists: it features 54-hole, no-cut stroke play tournaments and a team championship in which teams are compromised of four players.
Faldo said there is no doubt the PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger is vital for the game financially.
“I think when the dust settles, whether it takes six months, a year, whatever, my goodness, pro golf is in an overall better position financially than we were back in the day,” he said.
Phil Mickelson, who has embraced the LIV tour since its beginning, struck a different note when asked about his confidence in the future of the tour on Wednesday.
“I think that right now we have basically an agreement to have an agreement,” he said.
“Everything over the last couple of years that we’ve been told by Greg [Norman] and everybody on LIV has come to fruition, so we have a lot of confidence in what they have been saying to us because everything has been happening.”
Mickelson said he’s “very optimistic” about where professional golf is heading, adding that he’s “very appreciative” of the changes LIV Golf has made to professional golf.
LIV will begin its eighth event of the season on Thursday at the Valderrama Golf Club in the south of Spain.
Faldo said the quality of golf suffers as LIV Golf prioritizes prize money.
“It’s only half a dozen [players] that are really current, half of the field I don’t really know and half the field are there for the very nice last-placed money that you still get if you shoot 20 over.”